Janet Sheridan: Wow, it’s cold

Last Sunday, I raised the blinds as a hardy neighbor walked his dog by our house: an ordinary sight, except for the lowered earflaps on his hat and the hound’s embarrassment at wearing a red-and-yellow doggy sweater.

Fingernail-resistant frost edged our windows.

When Joel opened the door to retrieve the paper, frigid air invaded, bullied the furnace heat and touched my face with frozen fingers.

“Hmm,” I thought. “Must be a cold one.”

On Monday morning, I poured a cup of coffee and checked my e-mail. A brother wrote he’d heard about our weekend low temperatures on The Weather Channel.

“Are you folks in Craig OK?” he asked.

I looked out my window at the 8:00 street scene: schoolchildren walking to school with red ears and no hats; cars on slick snow trailing peacock plumes of exhaust; a bundled-up fellow riding a bicycle with one hand stuffed in his pocket; a neighbor, wearing a red hat and a happy smile, shoveling her sidewalk; two laughing men in a pickup pulling a trailer loaded with snow machines; and a city truck spewing sand at intersections.

Yup. We’re alright.

When our winters turn bitterly cold and our world feels brittle — as though it would shatter into frozen fragments at a shout — we go on with our lives. But we talk.

During a brief stop at the grocery store, I heard: “My dogs love this weather; we let them sleep inside.”

“Even my high school kid put on a coat this morning.”

“I breathe deeply on cold days to freeze any bad bugs in my body.”

“Damn truck wouldn’t start. Again.”

I like thinking I’m tough enough to survive in a place where temperatures hover below zero, 25 degrees above feels mild, and 36 degrees with sunshine causes us to exclaim happily and hold our faces to the sun.

I learned about the gumption of Moffat County’s populace during a meeting at the district administration office the first winter I worked there. I asked how many snow days were typically called during a school year.

Everybody laughed—at length. I thought I noted a tinge of hysteria, but I’m not sure.

Last year, during a cold spell, a friend told me, “I don’t mind the freezing temperatures, but when I walk to work, the constant squeaking gets to me.”

I shared this amusing comment with my brother, who lives near St. George, Utah. A puzzled silence followed.